Franklin Pastor Pressures Southern Baptists To Affirm LGBT Movement

Nashville area pastor Stan Mitchell is among those at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Phoenix this week to try to persuade Southern Baptists to embrace LGBT activism.

Mitchell is the founding pastor of GracePointe, a nondenominational evangelical church in Franklin that made national news in 2015 when it began to offer gays all the privileges of membership, including marriage. The church touts itself as “a progressive Christian community.”

Mitchell is involved with Faith in America, an advocacy group that believes that “LGBT people should be removed from the sin list,” according to a May 31 news release. The group claims that conservative Christians are harming LGBT youth by making them feel bad about their sexual orientation, which the group says has led some young people to kill themselves.

“Southern Baptists Must Change (and they are not the only ones),” Mitchell posted on his Facebook page June 9.

Group organizers asked Southern Baptist leaders to meet with them before or during the convention, but that could not be arranged because of a busy schedule, Southern Baptist Convention spokesman Roger Oldham told The Tennessee Star. The group is welcome to meet with Southern Baptist leaders at their Nashville headquarters another time, Oldham said, “so we can share the truth of the gospel.”

The group is allowed to protest outside the convention hall in Phoenix as long as activists do not block access, Oldham said. The annual meeting is being held Tuesday and Wednesday.

Faith in America has launched a three-year program called “Save yOur Kids!” which is designed to “address religious-based practices that condemn our teens and youth, creating hostile environments both at church and home, places most needed by our youth,” according to the group’s literature.

Group founder Mitchell Gold said in a June 2 news release that “this is not about conflict and division. It is about speaking the truth, and standing up for our kids and teens being hurt.” In the same news release, Stan Mitchell, the Franklin pastor, said that “the more we can get religious people to the realization that sexual orientation is an innate part of a person, a natural part of a human’s being, not a choice, that dramatically undermines the basis for viewing homosexuality as behavior-driven immorality or some perverse proclivity.”

But Southern Baptist leaders are not backing down from their position that the Bible considers homosexual behavior a sin.

In a prepared statement quoted by the Arizona Republic, Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said the church has “stood for the dignity of all human persons for decades,” but that Southern Baptists will “not ignore the teachings of Jesus himself.”

“To minimize or adjust a Christian sexual ethic would be to abandon the very message Jesus handed to us, and we have no authority to do this,” Moore said. “As Baptists, we want to be the first to be known by our love and compassion to those in the world around us, but we also must hold fast to the ‘faith which was once for all delivered to the saints’ (Jude 1:3).”

[…] America, which says that “LGBT people should be removed from the sin list.” In June, he traveled with others in the group to Phoenix, where the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention […]

Gracepointe is no longer a church it is a social club. It is not based on Christ or Biblical teachings and this man who charades himself as a pastor is a wolf in sheep skin who touts protecting and helping but has ruined and destroyed lives. Left massive damage in his wake with little regard.
Gracepointe at one time was something special and the spirit of God was there but as the things started turning God left the building and so did those of us who follow Him and not the lies of a charismatic snake oil salesman.

“Where is the church that will embrace my sin? I’d like to keep doing it because it feels good and its really hard to stop. But if like minded people will embrace me anyway and not force truth on me. I’d like to go to that church,” said the alcoholic, pot smoker, man who uses profanity, adulterer, swinger couple, party drinker, pornography addict, prostitute, stripper who’s just working her way through college, child molester, wife beater…. the list goes on forever. Can you imagine though how much fun that pot smoker’s church would be?